Zibo Barbecue is fulfilling people's common people's imagination of a free market: high-quality and affordable commodities, a hearty consumption experience, a market environment that is childlike and honest, and a humble and friendly "small government". Text/Wu Xiaobo Any popular occurrence is essentially a catharsis of social emotions. In the beginning, it was a collective unconscious, which then constituted a contemporary narrative. The popularity of Zibo barbecue does not meet the definition of popularity in the economic sense. It is neither scarce nor a new invention, nor does it represent a certain fashion. Its metaphorical significance lies in the "here and now" and the expression of freedom by the common people. It is said that the detonators of Zibo barbecue were those college students who were treated well during the epidemic. In May last year, more than 12,000 students from universities in Jinan, Shandong, and other places were taken to Zibo for isolation. The government specially invited the students to have a barbecue and agreed that everyone would bring their friends to visit Zibo again when the spring is warm and the flowers are blooming. This "promise" is a kind of aimless expectation, but in the end, the beneficiary interprets it as a warm return movement. In the world of the Internet, college students have always been the most active fermenters of popular culture, and they are the core elements of what Gladwell called "the law of personal characters" and "the law of environmental power". The emotions would be smoky, which in turn triggered the "post-epidemic empathy" of the whole society. The popular second-level detonator is the local government of Zibo. They are actively complicit in their emotions. In the past three months or so, they have distributed barbecue coupons, launched a dedicated barbecue line, organized and arranged for barbecue volunteers, and…